Otaue Rice Planting Festival御田植神事

A summer celebration full of ritual, dance and song about Japan's primary food staple

Rice-planting season is a fascinating and beautiful period in Japan. Open fields are covered knee deep with water, with green stalks of rice slowly emerging from the surface.

You can see the rice-planting rituals at the Otaue Rice Planting Festival on June 14 at Osaka's Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine, and learn how it was done centuries ago in Japan.

Don't Miss

The procession of people dressed in full samurai garb

The purification ritual to bless the seeds

How to Get There

From Tennoji Station, walk to adjacent Tennoji Ekimae Station and take the Hankaidenki Hankai line to Sumiyoshitorii-mae Station. You will arrive next to Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine.

How They Do It

Oxen, harnessed to wooden plows, first till the fields. Priests then perform a purification ritual and distribute the seedlings. Dressed in traditional garb, festival participants begin to plant the seeds, all while a variety of rituals, dances and songs are performed.

Otaue celebrates the planting of rice seedlings in paddy fields

Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine

The rice-planting festival is held on the grounds of Osaka's Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine, a worthwhile destination in itself. The shrine is one of few in Japan that was built prior to the influence of mainland Asia.

Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine's architecture is considered a pure representation of Japan